I think it's likely Tivo will have some discounts for the holiday season, especially black Friday and cyber Monday. Not so sure about the Stream because it's so new. A reduced fee (say $99) to transfer a lifetime subscription from a series 3 to a series 4 would be very nice, but I suspect highly unlikely. Just guesses on my part.

The TP4 is an awkward product IMO. Anybody willing to spend $250 for that might as well spend another $100 for XL4 with a more reasonable amount of storage.

You have a good point but I went the TP4 way because I want an image in my home in case the hard drive goes bad, so I spent the $100 on a 2Tb drive to update my TP4 and will keep the 0.5Tb drive on the shelf, if I went for the TPXL4 I would than have to purchase another 2Tb drive for another $100 and hope that the sectors on my new drive are = or greater than the TPXL4 2Tb drive sectors so I could copy it.
OH, and I spent $225 for the TP4

That's a good plan for those of us that are tech savvy. I hadn't thought of the "having a backup" strategy when I wrote the above so thanks for showing me how the TP4 might be the smarter route than the XL4.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lessd

You have a good point but I went the TP4 way because I want an image in my home in case the hard drive goes bad, so I spent the $100 on a 2Tb drive to update my TP4 and will keep the 0.5Tb drive on the shelf, if I went for the TPXL4 I would than have to purchase another 2Tb drive for another $100 and hope that the sectors on my new drive are = or greater than the TPXL4 2Tb drive sectors so I could copy it.
OH, and I spent $225 for the TP4

The TP4 is an awkward product IMO. Anybody willing to spend $250 for that might as well spend another $100 for XL4 with a more reasonable amount of storage.

I think the Premiere 4 is a great entry level product if they can get it down to $200 or less. Most people are not hardcore users like us and would be perfectly happy with the storage size. TiVo's biggest barrier to entry has always been the up front cost. Most people just aren't willing to pay hundreds of dollars for a dvr they can get from their cable company for free.

That's a good plan for those of us that are tech savvy. I hadn't thought of the "having a backup" strategy when I wrote the above so thanks for showing me how the TP4 might be the smarter route than the XL4.

This is the precise strategy I followed with several Series 3 units I purchased around 4-5 years ago, but one which I had been second-guessing. Let me explain. For each of my Series 3 units (one OLED and two HD's), after waiting about a month to ensure each unit didn't have any glaring defects, I took out the hard drive and used WinMFS to create a backup and restore it to a new 1Tb drive, which I then installed into the Tivo. I saved off the backup image as well as the original hard drive.

When reports starting coming out about a year ago that newer hard drives were becoming incompatible with Series 3 units (due to 4k sectors), I even went out and bought a spare 1Tb drive (WD10EARS) just in case one of the upgraded drives in my units dies.

Anyway, last month, I decided I wanted to upgrade to an XL4 or Premiere 4 (using it to replace two of my Series 3 units). After researching a bit, I came to the conclusion that the only differences between the XL4 and the Premiere 4 are the larger capacity, glo remote, and THX certification for the former. I definitely wanted 2Tb, but I use a universal remote and I don't care about the THX certification, so really, it came down to whether I wanted to buy the Premiere 4 for a little over $100 less than the XL4, then purchase a 2Tb drive for about $100 to upgrade the original hard drive, or just spend roughly the same amount and have the XL4 ready to go as soon as it was delivered. I spent days agonising over whether I should just get the XL4 and be done with it, or purchase the Premiere 4 and deal with the hassle of upgrading the original hard drive, but have the safety and peace of mind of a backup. I thought about my flawless experience with all my existing Series 3 units, and how I've never had any problems, and even lamented wasting a few bucks on the spare 1Tb drive I had purchased last year. So I had convinced myself that I was being overly paranoid wanting to retain backups and that I should just go with the convenience of the XL4.

Well wouldn't you know it, shortly before I was actually going to go ahead and pull the trigger on an XL4, that's when one of my HD units started acting up! I noticed live TV started freezing up,and a couple of recordings got cut off. And remote control response started getting really sluggish. Are you kidding me??

So I decided to put my XL4 purchase on the back-burner until I figured out what was going on. Over the course of the next couple of weeks, I soft-rebooted the unit, hard-rebooted the unit, increased ventilation, deleted unneeded recordings, seasons passes, and wishlists, and re-ran guided setup. But it only got worse. Live TV keep freezing up more frequently, recordings kept geting cut off more frequently, remote control responses got even more sluggish, and the unit even began rebooting on me. Well, I finally unhooked it and opened up the case. I took a look at the capacitors and verified that there were no bulges, not even slight ones. Next, I took out the drive and hooked it up to a PC and ran the Western Digital diagnostics utility (the drive was a WD10EACS). The quick test revealed no issues, but then I ran the extended test overnight, and sure enough, bad sectors!!

So I took out the spare drive I had purchased last year, ran it through Western Digital diagnostics to verify it was clean, then used WinMFS to slap on the backup image I had made 5 years ago. I installed the drive back into the Tivo, did a C&D to be safe, and re-ran guided setup. Tt took about a day for it to upgrade to the latest software version, but I was back in business and all the issues I had started experiencing a few weeks ago went away.

Anyway, was I ever glad that I saved off the backup image and bought a spare drive! I know some will see it as pure coincidence, but personally, I took it as a clear sign from above regarding my XL4 vs. Premiere 4 purchase decision. Obviously, I'm now going to purchase a Premiere 4. Not only that, but I think I'll purchase two WD20EURS drives, one to put into the Premiere 4 after about a month, and another as a spare for 5 years down the road when the first drive dies.

Just received an email for "TiVo’s Spooktacular Sale". Not much of a sale. $30 off of a Premier, and $50 off of a XL. The XL gets a free Wireless N adapter as well.

I got the flier too. I am tempted to get a plain old Premier to replace an old S2DT I have on monthly (I also have a lifetime 1GB TivoHD). I don't think the XL is worth $130 more. I need OTA and analog cable cability, so the new boxes are out.

However, I really would like to see some sort of discount on PLS. Right now it is at 31 month break even ($399/$12.99)

Just received an email for "TiVo’s Spooktacular Sale". Not much of a sale. $30 off of a Premier, and $50 off of a XL. The XL gets a free Wireless N adapter as well.

Actually, if you compare the ad to the Product page for TP, the specs are not the same for the promo. Both the TP and XL offered have smaller hdd's than full-price models ($70 for the promo TP) IS $30 off, but where is the $99 model on the site?

Actually, if you compare the ad to the Product page for TP, the specs are not the same for the promo. Both the TP and XL offered have smaller hdd's than full-price models ($70 for the promo TP) IS $30 off, but where is the $99 model on the site?

Not exactly - the discounted Premiere and Premiere XL are discontinued models.

The discounted Premiere is the original Premiere it had a 320GB hard drive, the current Premiere has a 500GB hard drive (the names are the same but they have different model numbers).

The discounted Premiere XL has been discontinued all together and there is no replacement model - it was an upscaled Premiere (dual tuner Cable/OTA).

The current Premiere XL4 is a 4 tuner digital cable only model which is completely different than the discounted Premiere XL

There no longer is a current model at $99, the current model Premiere is $150 and has been since it was released.

Exactly what I am waiting for. A premiere 4 at $199.99 on BF. I have the 2TB AV GP drive just waiting for the image.

I just got one (TP4) for $229.00, given the $400 for lifetime and the $89 to upgrade the drive (2Tb) making the total cost in $719 range, is it so important to try to save $30 or about 4% on the system??

I wonder if you buy your P4 outside of Tivoland - will you still get $100 off on putting Lifetime on it? Currently, that's the "deal" I get when signed in and shopping - $250 on the P4 (bah) but $100 off on Lifetime.

Even at $200 delivered buying an outsider P4 (without getting the discount on Lifetime) is $50 more expensive in total after you add it in.